[thelist] RE: Bait & "standards"

Mark Cheng mark.cheng at ranger.com.au
Thu Jul 12 21:09:08 CDT 2001


>-----Original Message-----
>From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
>[mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of John Dowdell
>
>I think Eveline may have had the strongest sound bite here:
>> When my client wants all the hooters and bells, I always suggest
>> they better make it a double site.
>
>Whether "hooters and bells" means SWF or big media loads or HTML
>4.01-Strict validation or whatever, it can always be helpful to provide
>access to the same information optimized for a text-based voice reader.
>

If that's what she means by double site, sure, I go with that.  But that's
an accessibility issue.  What about if the bells&whistles were say, a
sorting facility/user chooses layout facility that worked on gen5+ but not
below?  Still going to do a double site? or just let the main site degrade?
The main site will still be accessible to text speech readers.


>Rephrased, why *not* just include a navigation for spoken text, alongside
>whatever level of viewership you want for your richer representation? A
>well-done text/voice navigation will be accessible to everyone, and you
>won't have to give up your chosen goodies, whether it's an "approved" DOM
>or whatever.
>

You're agreeing with us.  Make your main site degrade i.e you'll lose the
flashy goodies, but people can still see the content if they don't have the
target browser.

>
>Do all these problems fade away if we look at it as providing for that
>minimal access path, and then having your richer representation be at
>whatever level you and your client deem the best fit for that particular
>audience...?
>
>jd
>

If by mimimal access path you mean accessibility, every site should have
that, preferably built into the main site, but otherwise in a double site.
But, that approach doesn't really help to answer the question of whether you
should design the richer features to exclude the older browsers.


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